Utah State Grad Wins Carpet Design Competition

“I graduated in May of 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in interior design from Utah State,” said Meg Turner.

This makes Turner pretty unique already. She said Utah State’s interior design program is competitive. By the time they graduated, there were only 12 other students in her class. But Turner’s story is even more unique: she’s the winner of Durkan’s 2017 "D*scover Carpet Design Challenge.”

“Carpet design, I didn’t even really know existed,” Turner said. “I mean, it made sense that someone designs carpets, but I didn’t really know it existed until we found the Durkan competition. Especially custom carpet, because usually, you know, you see things and it’s probably stock, because it’s something that they have over and over and over.”

Turner said the carpet we have here at UPR is probably a stock design from Mohawk, the larger company that Durkan is a part of. Just statistically speaking, most of the University’s carpet probably is, too. The carpet she designed is different: it’s custom, and non-repeating. Her design includes a pattern for a ballroom and a hallway. She chose two ways people show their love as design elements: diamonds and words.

“It was completely based off of the jewel side of it and the reflection of light, how that plays off of everything and adds that different look to it every time you see it,” she said. “And then in the hall space, I did a combination of text and this kind of facet pattern. Text isn’t usually something that’s pulled into carpet because people try to read it, but I tried to pull it in in a way where people couldn’t tell it was text, but it still added a lot of texture.”

Her design won the 2017 competition. The year before, she took second in the same competition, which USU swept in 2016. Every designer that placed was from Utah State. When Megan placed for the second time, Durkan was especially interested in her. They flew her to their headquarters and gave her a three day tour that included shadowing designers and getting an inside look at their upcoming lines.

“They said this was the first time they’d ever flown someone to their place for that, so it was cool to kind of be the first one that got to go see it,” she said.

Turner is currently working locally for Cottonwood Residential, as well as working on a few new projects that will be announced in 2018.